Security fears grow over electronic voting systems

By Henry Hamman
Financial Times
September 12 2003

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While the stakes for Diebold are high, they are even higher for the US election system as it grows increasingly dependent on computerisation. Electronic voting "could be a real nightmare if it's not watched carefully", said James Campbell, a professor of political science at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

Prof Campbell said that after the Florida election crisis of 2000, so much attention went to eliminating hanging chads and butterfly ballots that politicians and election officials risked "focusing on one problem to the exclusion of more traditional problems like vote fraud and ballot security. There should be a good deal of concern about various sorts of mischief."

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Researchers looking at electronic voting have begun to call for a slowdown. No one knows what percentage of the 2004 presidential vote will be cast electronically. Experts say more than 10 per cent of votes cast in the 2000 presidential election were electronic.

Michael Alvarez, co-director of the California Institute of Technology/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Voting Technology Project, has been urging states not to rush into electronic voting, and to ensure an independent record of votes cast electronically

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